T&C Family Album

Princess Margaret

The glamorous Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, graced our cover in May 1960. Princess Margaret would be little Prince George's great-aunt, were she alive to meet him.

Once third in line to the throne, she fell behind her nephews and niece (Princes Charles, Andrew, and Edward, and Princess Anne), the issue of her older sister Queen Elizabeth. The back of the queue had its own privileges. A nightlife lover, she was a fixture of London's nightclubs, dancing the night away with the jet-set crowd of the 1950s and 60s. Princess Margaret counted Sharman Douglas, daughter of the American Ambassador to Britain, Lewis Williams Douglas, among her close friends. On the Princess' first official trip abroad, she and her older sister were chaperoned by Captain Peter Townsend, with whom she immediately fell in love and wished to marry. His divorce made him ineligible, and Margaret later found love in society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, with whom she had two children, David Armstrong-Jones and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones.

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The May 1960 cover of Princess Margaret accompanied a feature on Portland Island, an island that was gifted to Her Royal Highness by British Columbia. It was hoped that Portland would offer her a respite from her very public life, but she much preferred the balmy shores of Mustique. "I have always had a dread of becoming a passenger in life," she once said. Wallflower she wasn't: Princess Margaret is best remembered for her spitfire personality and passion for adventure.